Pest appears in pineapple shipment

LOS ANGELES » Federal agriculture inspectors at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have found a destructive pest in a shipment of pineapples that’s never been seen before in the United States.

The U.S. Customers and Border Protection said yesterday that the variety of leafhopper found late last month from Costa Rica can cause severe damage to crops such as grapes, potatoes, soybeans and corn.

The insect was the second first-in-the-nation pest that inspectors at the Southern California port complex have found in the last two months. Crews there found a type of aphid in late June.